The NDAA makes improvements to the military commissions but fails to bring those tribunals in line with the U.S. Constitution and international law under the Geneva Conventions. It continues to apply the military commissions to a much broader group of individuals than should be tried before them under the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and does not prohibit military commission trials of children. The new law does, however, for the first time require experienced capital defense attorneys in death penalty cases, authorize more resources for defense counsel, impose new limitations on the use of hearsay and coerced testimony and afford greater access to witnesses and evidence for defendants.

The ACLU firmly believes that the military commissions should be shut down for good as they remain a second class system of justice that cannot shed the shameful legacy of Guantánamo and all it stands for, rendering their results open to question.

“These are now President Obama's military commissions: he owns them and all of the problems that come with them, and their inevitable failure will scar his legacy and embolden our critics in the world. Military commissions are an unnecessary, jury-rigged creation, second-rate in comparison to our legal system. Obama is tinkering with the Constitution for no good reason.”

Donchaknow? Eleven years after Matthew Shephard was killed on a fence in Montana because he was gay, let's raise a glass and three cheers for Obama's huge achievement in managing to (using his left had no less) sign a bill that slipped in a more-or-less meaningless hate crimes provision that will do nothing to end hatred of gays nor the crimes against them. Like he gives a sh!t whether gay men or women are abused and killed when he hasn't got the guts to take direct action to end don't ask don't tell or to push directly to repeal the defense of marriage act.

Like everything, it's impossible to believe that Obama cares about anything except his own existence as the first sort-of-black president. But next time we call him out on his failings, as president, to actually do something significant to advance opportunity for gay Americans, he'll unctiously point to his signing of this bill, whatever its heinous components, as proof that he's done his part to help.

travesty of the Bush administration behind and set us on a new and better course, one that would speak clearly about our commitment to basic human rights and our belief in the integrity of the American justice sysem.

And he failed.

There is no blaming the Bush administration anymore: not only does he own this, he's established who he is and what he believes.

And I am sorry, but sadly not surprised, that this is the course he has chosen.

Obama is a card carrying member of the Bush butch club dating to his support for the amendment that allowed Bush to send nuclear material to rogue nuke power India. HRC, Biden, Lieberman, and McCain all signed on. Feingold and about twenty others did not.

Obama likes nice suits, big houses, and all the finer things in life. He's them, not us. Unless you're making well over 250k a year.

That's his base. He's not aspiring to return to the simple joys of shopping at target. Neither is his wife. No crime in that; but this is just the latest installment of what can the government do for me and my pals, played out against the time-honored backdrop of screw the little gal and guy.

Getting in their faces is about the only thing that works; but there's an awful lot of money floating around for those willing to lend an ear to big pharma et al.